Black Poetry Day is celebrated every year on October 17 to honor the contributions and influence of Black poets and writers to American literature. Folk musician Stanley A. Ransom first proposed the holiday in 1970 to commemorate the birth of Jupiter Hammon, the first published Black American poet. At almost 50 years of age, Hammon published his first poem "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries" in 1761.
This video captures iconic Black poet Gil Scott-Heron in the final years of his life. In 2010, a little over a year before his death, he released his final album I'm New Here. Here, he performs the title track.
